


The creed of the seamstress

by thegoddamnknightshade



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Female Lavellan - Freeform, Gen, Wardens, curing the blight, female cousland - Freeform, rogues all the way down, weisshaupt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:32:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3699263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegoddamnknightshade/pseuds/thegoddamnknightshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all in the blood, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The creed of the seamstress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RaelynnMarie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaelynnMarie/gifts).



> For RaelynnMarie, who provided me with this prompt:  
> "(Female Hawke Female Inquisitor (Dragon Age) Female Warden (Dragon Age)) Okay but come on these three are epic and I can just imagine them complaining about their struggles/companions/ANYTHING. They're heroes and they all understand each other super well. Sorry this one is short but hopefully gives a general idea.  
> Again, I don't mind any rating, though I'm not a big fan of gore/guts. I AM a big fan of SADNESS. Or cutesy. Death, happiness, all open season.  
> (ANY RATING)"  
> I tried to work out more details about your awesome lady protags. This's what I came up with. I hope you like it!

Winter in Weisshaupt was particularly hellish. No amount of fires burning in the austere hallways of the Warden fortress could warm it. Body heat couldn’t warm her extremities. She had taken to wearing gloves into the bath, and if she abstained from washing her hair until it was absolutely necessary, no one could blame her. Could they? Hawke was tall and skinny, anemic by nature. Even Kirkwall’s balmy winters were uncomfortable. In the winter air she was turning positively blue. Make that literally blue, she thought, looking at her hands. She clenched them up and tucked her hands into her sleeves. 

The whole experience was vaguely nostalgic, if you could be nostalgic for things that never happened. If Bethany had lived through the Deep Roads, maybe she’d be here, too. Not taking Bethany had never been an option, Hawke didn’t regret that, she only regretted the way it had all ended. In pain, the two of them, alone. She rounded a corner, passing two Warden-Ensigns in their blue and silver. They were holding hotel pans full of clean dishes.

There was some kind of Important Personnage Party going on in less than an hour, by which she meant a lunch with the First Warden. Hawke had met First Warden Gardner exactly once, on the day when she’d been allowed to remain at Weisshaupt. Since then, the woman had been busy, which made it hard for Hawke to investigate, well, anything. Mostly she saw Warden-Ensigns as she wandered the cold halls of Weisshaupt, and waited around, and healed. It was very exhausting. She’d found little and less in her explorations, limited as they were.

“Champion,” said a familiar, and unwelcome, voice. Hawke paused, and wondered if she could pretend to not have heard, but of course she’d already stopped. So no. She thought about doing it anyway. “We thought you were dead!”

Hawke turned to face Cassandra Pentaghast. Behind her was the Inquisitor, a slender elven rogue with dark hair and dark eyes. “Oh, you know, someone blows up a Chantry and suddenly even a giant spider isn’t anything to worry about,” she said, trying for levity. No one laughed. No one even smirked. “Come on. I’m not possessed.” Still nothing. Jeez, she wasn’t even a mage! “You got me. I am actually a giant demon spider.”

“I’ll have to remember that,” said the Inquisitor. 

“Yeah, do that,” said Hawke.

They stood there in awkward silence. Hawke had been glad to die for country, but honestly, she hadn’t been reckoning on surviving. “You know,” said the Inquisitor--Lavellan! That was her name--“I heard the Hero of Ferelden is here.”

“Too many rogues,” said Hawke. “Kill your double. Triple? Double. I will not be out-pickpocketed.” She doubted she could hold a candle to either Warden Cousland [i]or[/i] Inquisitor Lavellan, since they had the enviable advantage of having all their inside parts in the right place. “Start with Cousland. She’s been off doing whatever. She’ll be easy prey.”

Lavellan laughed then, damn her. “Do you need a hand to get to the luncheon? You’re tottering like an old Chantry mother.” She turned to Cassandra. The knives at her back glinted in the weak winter sunlight, and Hawke’s hands itched for her bow. “Help the Champion,” said Lavellan. “It’d be most inappropriate for her to be late.”

“As you wish,” said Cassandra. She took one of Hawke’s hands in hers, slung that entire arm over her shoulder. It took a lot of weight off her, and Cassandra was short enough that it didn’t stretch the stitches. Lavellan would’ve been too small. Good allocation of resources, she thought, flashing the Inquisitor a thumbs up.

Hawke rested her cheek on Cassandra’s head, wrapping herself around the Seeker like a tapeworm. “Do I smell watermelon,” she asked. She did not smell watermelon. She smelled cloves and orange zest. Who the hell smelled like cloves and orange zest after days of travel? Had Cassandra and the Inquisitor had time to bathe? Maker. Of course they had. “Hey. Seeker. Watermelon, yes or no?”

“No, Champion,” she said. Nice accent. Hawke hadn’t really had the time to appreciate it at Skyhold, between the shouting and the Varric hiding every other second. “You smell like elfroot.”

Pshhht. Yeah. She bathed in the stuff like every day.

They pushed through the doors to the officer’s mess. Hawke hadn’t actually been in there. She ate with the ensigns, since the ensigns were the ones who were helping her out--was there some kind of expectation of her doing the Joining? She hoped not. Anyway, the mess was just as boring and austere as the rest of the castle. Did Wardens not believe in luxury at all? She frowned at the floor-to-ceiling standards, the halved shield with its rampant griffon picked out in silver stitchery. Who had time to embroider something that big? Hawke pictured a horde of tiny Warden-Ensigns stitching away and laughed. 

As she turned to the Inquisitor to make that pithy comment, she spotted a pair of wardens standing side-by-side at the head of the high table. Her words dried up in her mouth. “Wow,” she said instead. 

The Hero, Warden-Commander, and Queen of Ferelden stood tall next to the First Warden. They were studies in opposites; the blonde Queen in her finery, small and delicately limbed. Her hair was combed back from her round face, set with golden combs. Did she just travel that way? Against all logic, Hawke wanted to ask. Except everyone knew just how the Queen of Ferelden had gained her throne, and Hawke didn’t want to join Anora where-ever Anora was. Somewhere. She shuddered.

First Warden Gardner was no more comforting. Taller than Hawke, her hair was a deep bloody red and long, down to the small of her back. Her face was a convention of angry triangles, right down to the dark eyebrows. “Are you related to Cassandra,” she asked, elbowing the Seeker she was leaning on. “Twinsies.” Warden Gardner frowned. It looked like someone attempted to make a frowning face with their pasta.

“We have matters to discuss. All of us. Come in and sit down so we may be served.” Hawke dragged her feet, but she was not a superhuman goddess of war. Cassandra was always going to win in a contest of strength. Lavellan snickered behind her hand, quietly, but just before they reached the high table she stopped and bowed.

“Sit,” said the Queen. 

Right, the Matters. Hawke sat across the table. The doors at her back, unlocked and guarded only by Wardens, who--as Hawke suddenly remembered--didn’t like her that much and were not her allies. If she had been anyone else stumbling half-dead out of the Fade, they would have left her to die. Had Stroud not vouched for her, if he hadn’t been there to tell them how she’d come to be that way, she could be dead now. 

Warden-Ensigns served the soup course. Hawke chewed on her lip, watching the way the Wardens sat so stiffly next to each other. They were allies, weren’t they? Cousland was a hero, she’d put down a whole Blight practically on her own and gotten the Wardens back into Ferelden. She elbowed Lavellan and gestured vaguely with her spoon. “Nice tapestries, right? I bet your Inquisition bets you had the Wardens’ resources.”

“The embroidery’s quite fine, but ours are a lot sparklier,” said Lavellan gamely. “We have gemstones. I should know, I ripped them off some dead mages myself.” 

Hawke groaned. “Don’t remind me. I brought a guy in Darktown some like, ancient fairytale’s hair? That’s what I told him it was. It was actually, like, just some blonde hair I bought off a whore in the Blooming Ro--” Cassandra elbowed her in the side, sharply, and Hawke fell silent.

The Warden-Commander of Ferelden was smiling. Not a lot. Just a little. “During the Blight, I combed through half the Deep Roads in search of some records for a girl from House Ortan,” she said. “Not worth what it got me, to be honest with you.”

“I wish I had tapestries,” sighed Hawke at her soup. “I’m going to tell Varric to get me my tapestries made. Is he here? I can’t imagine him passing up this chance.” For one thing, it’d finally put him on the right side of the Waking Sea. It was all overland to Kirkwall from here. He wanted to go home, didn’t he?

Cassandra shook her head. “No. Varric decided to remain behind.” There was a story behind that, Hawke judged. “I imagine he will regret it when he hears you yet live.”

First Warden Gardner set aside her spoon and cleared her throat right as Hawke was starting to answer. What was with these people and interruptions? She’d put down a whole Qunari invasion almost singlehandedly. She’d stabbed the Arishok in the back during an honor duel. Surely a little respect wasn’t too out of line? “We have found what we believe to be a cure for the Calling,” the First Warden announced. “It requires materials we do not have.”

Lavellan looked like someone had slapped her with a haddock. Hawke felt like she’d been slapped with a haddock, all chilly-cold. Did Anders know? She’d tell him if he didn’t. She would track him down and be all, Hey, I can fix your brain! This part of your brain. Just this specific part. (Anders was one hundred percent an extremist, but that didn’t mean she didn’t love him or understand what he’d done the same way she understood why Merrill had, like, pacted with some Pride demon to get her mirror fixed, or why Sebastian wanted to off the Harimann’s.) (He could profess innocent intentions all he wanted. Hawke knew vengeance when she saw it.)

“Materials? Wardens can conscript whatever they want, can’t they?” It was Lavellan who found her words first, pulling Hawke from her reverie. “If it’s in the service of fighting the Blight. Which this is.” Right, she thought, the right of conscription. The conscription rights. Without the constant drain of the Calling, the Warden’s numbers would stabilize. Blights wouldn’t be such a crazy time of recruitment, and the Wardens would be more than soldiers so green they ought to be plowed and planted. 

She stroked her chin where a beard might have been, had she been able to grow one. Some dragons had beards, she thought. Too bad she’d completely forgotten to trawl the Fade in search of how Morrigan did that shapeshifting thing.

“Yes,” agreed Warden Cousland. “But it’s more complex than simply demanding the Orlesians hand over what griffin bone artifacts they have, or asking Kirkwall to send us drakestone, or purchasing dragon sinew from the Inquisition.” She gave a respectful nod to Lavellan at that. 

Hawke snapped her fingers, interrupting Cousland before she could continue. “You need blood,” she said, pointing an imperious finger at the two Wardens across the table. The bitten nails maybe reduced the gesture. There were bloody little scabs around the edges. “You Wardens are like, hip-deep in blood magic. Maybe chest-deep. Or drowning.” 

Cassandra frowned, leaning forward. “Blood magic? First Warden, is this true?”

“We are permitted to do anything we deem necessary to prevent the Blight,” said Gardner. “It is not your place to judge what keeps you safe in the darkness.”

“That isn’t the matter at hand,” interrupted Cousland, loud and imperious. Right, nobility. She had the same air as Aveline did when Aveline got testy, actually, so maybe it was just that she was used to bossing people around. “Yes. We need blood. We need the blood of a dragon.”

“Morrigan,” said Lavellan immediately. “She can transform--”

“I will not see harm done to her,” said Cousland. “Not even for the lives of every Warden.”

That shut everyone up just in time for the meat course. Where had the salad course gone? Probably where-ever awkward arguments went to die. Hawke sighed. She couldn’t even taste whatever weird, thick dressing had been put on the lettuce. Dear Anders, food in the Anderfels sucks. This explains your cooking so much. She picked at her meat, enjoying the discomforted looks Gardner and Cousland both shot her. Even Cassandra seemed a little irritated by Hawke eating with her hands. “Explain,” said Cassandra, finally. “Why have you called us here.”

“We need blood,” repeated Cousland.

Hawke shrugged, spreading her hands wide. “So you’ve said. Repeating it just makes you sound kind of creepy.”

“Dragon blood is easy to come by, if you know where a dragon is,” said Lavellan doubtfully. “It’s not exactly hard to kill them.” Her hand drifted towards the vials of alchemic mixtures at her waist. Hawke frowned. Of course Lavellan was a renowned dragon slayer. Hawke had made a note of that while taking her grand tour of Thedas post-Kirkwall. Wasn’t sure how she’d forgotten it, actually. “I saw signs of one--”

“We have dragon blood,” said Gardner, “That’s not what we need. We need the [i]blood of the dragon[/i].” Her green eyes fixed themselves on Hawke.

Cousland spoke, then, looking down at her hands in her lap. It was a weird, demure posture for the Queen, who had sat straight-backed through every awkward attempt at conversation so far. Hawke’s stomach gave an unsettling twist down in her gut. The whole thing was vaguely foreboding. “Do you know how King Calenhad became strong enough to unite the Alamarri?”

“He was just that cool,” said Hawke firmly.

Cassandra frowned. “His skill at tactics and arms,” she guessed. Lavellan just shrugged and popped a piece of meat, red and dripping, into her mouth. 

“He drank the blood of a high dragon, and it made him more than a man. The legacy of that choice has carried the Theirin line for generations. It grants them strength, and speed, and skill… and their blood has special properties.” Cousland lowered her hands to the table and laced her fingers together. Her knuckles had gone pale, stretched over bones. Hawke rarely had occasion to think of the hands of others. Now, they were all she could focus on. Those dusky hands against the pale, scarred wood of the table probably held the mysteries of the whole world.

None of that made sense, upon reflection. “So why are we here? If you need blood of the dragon, you should ask your husband,” said Lavellan. “I hear he’s besotted with you.”

Cousland shook her head. “His blood carries the Taint. And killing him… there’s no one to carry on the line. If we don’t do this, there never will be.” 

The First Warden spoke up again. “The Taint makes you infertile. Counteracting it this way… it will help. Then the line can continue on, without any wars in Ferelden. Can you honestly say that more war is what anyone needs?”

“So what do you need, specifically,” asked Lavellan. Hawke swallowed her last bite of meat, and dabbed blood away from her mouth. 

“We need clean blood, infused with the essence of the high dragon,” said the First Warden. “Not just blood. Life’s blood.”

Lavellan frowned. “Someone will die for this?”

“One life for the lives of every Warden who will ever live,” Cousland said. “One life for the stability of Thedas.”

Hawke suddenly had a very bad feeling just whose blood was going to be required. “You want me to do it,” she said. It wasn’t a question, because there were two Wardens staring at her like her face was the most complex game of pyramid chess they’d ever seen, and she was smart, whip-smart. 

“Yes,” said Cousland.

*

Hawke said no, of course. She had only just escaped certain death, and agreeing to another kind of death wasn’t in the cards. Nations survived dynastic wars all the time. That was sort of what nations did, after all. 

But she was still healing, and the healing of the Wardens was not free. As days passed, her progress towards healing began to reverse. Hawke took to her bed, where Lavellan visited, sometimes. “I found out what they need me for,” she said, the second time. “They want me to make the remaining Old Gods tranquil.”

“Good fucking luck,” said Hawke. “Pass me the water pitcher. No, the whole thing.”

Lavellan paused, plucking at the hem of her tunic as Hawke chugged the entire pitcher. No matter how much she drank, it never quenched her thirst. The water tasted faintly of blood. It left pink splotches on the fabric of her nightshirt. Weisshaupt was still cold as hell. “You should help them,” she said. “You’re… they’re not going to help you. I sent for Vivienne, but she won’t get here in time.”

Hawke pretended to faint. Lavellan tried, every visit, anyway. 

*

It wasn’t that she wanted the Wardens to keep dying. Hawke didn’t know why she clung to her resistance. It seemed to her that questions were left unanswered, and she’d never been able to abide a mystery. That was why she’d spent so much time teaching herself to pick locks, and read, and to make jokes that would coax people into showing their true selves. She couldn’t wait for the end of a story; it’d been the thing that annoyed her most about Varric, how he always embellished the middles of his yarns but never the ends. Hawke hallucinated, sometimes, about him. Not just Varric, though. Aveline, at the end of her bed: “I’m here for you, Hawke. Always.” And Merrill, stupid sweet dumb Merrill, “You have always been my very best friend.” Isabela leaving with the Tome of Koslun, and Tallis, and even Lavellan.

In the end, though, nothing would really change. The Taint would be diluted, a little. Cousland would be able to have her dumb husband’s heirs, or he’d be able to conceive them, or whatever. Darkspawn would still rise, mages would still kill templars (and good for them), only Hawke would be dead.

That part grated the most. She’d always wanted to die a hero.

*

“Your gums are bleeding,” said Cousland. Hawke opened her eyes and looked, really looked, at the Queen of Ferelden. Pretty, she guessed. Clean-faced, hair combed back neatly, her intimidating finery shed for the blue tunic and black leggings of a Warden in her natural habitat. She sat in the chair as if it were a throne. Some people, Hawke supposed, were just born noble. Cousland would probably look beautiful even as she lay dying, infected with Fade spider poison. Hawke, though? She was pretty sure she smelled like a bog body. 

Hawke closed her eyes. “Maybe I should just spit on your ritual,” said Hawke. “Drink me up some dragon blood, get all better…”

“You were never going to get better, Hawke.”

That was unexpected. Hawke frowned. “Not the punch line I would’ve gone for,” she admitted, “but hey, some people go for that kind of thing--”

Cousland said, “There isn’t any cure for your poison. Even the Joining wouldn’t help. You’ve been living on borrowed time, and I need you to do this. Lavellan needs you to do this. Thedas needs you to make the same sacrifice your father did.”

“My father lived,” said Hawke. “And got paid rather handsomely for his trouble.”

No one could pay a dead person, not even the Queen of Ferelden. Cousland left in silence. It wouldn’t be long before they got desperate; if it couldn’t be just anyone, then they’d intervene soon. Hawke laid back on her pillows to wait.

*

In the end, Cousland brought a flagon and dropped it in Hawke’s lap. The pain was excruciating enough, but with the added stimulus, it was everything that Hawke could do to smother a scream. “Fuck you,” she said, spitting blood at the Queen of Ferelden.

In the end, there isn’t really any choice. She wanted to die for a cause, to go out with a bang. But really all she got in the end was this--the taste of blood, cold and thick, in her mouth--and the resignation towards her impending doom. Every day after she drank that dragon blood down, she regained her strength. The Wardens became solicitous again, each Ensign staring at her as if she were Andraste come again. It would’ve appealed to her, if she wasn’t also aware that she was nothing more than a pig for slaughter.

Lavellan left, once her job was done, with a letter for Varric. Lady Vivienne had gotten sidetracked in Nevarra. It didn’t seem to much matter.

Hawke learned how to sled.

*

Winter faded from the land and each day that dawned was another day gone, wasted. At least Bethany’s death had been instant. Carver’s death had been agonizingly long at the time, but in retrospect the hours searching had gone by so fast. And Leandra… 

There were so many things Hawke wanted to do. She wanted to say goodbye to Aveline, to tell Sebastian to get his head out of his ass, give Merrill the arulin’holm she’d denied her so long ago. There was a sword in her things, the ones she’d left at Skyhold, that she’d meant for Fenris. Leaving things undone had always bothered her. 

Cousland tried to tell her that her death would be fast. A cut across the throat and then she’d fade into a peaceful sleep. Hawke just laughed. What was instant, really, anyway? Some people thought healing potions and poultices had instant effect. Tea was supposed to gain its colors within moments of being dumped into the hot water. Things tossed in the fire ought to catch instantly, too, and yet they never did. 

She hoped it would be like falling asleep, like staring at the sick-green sky of the Fade and waiting to die.

*

“I will name my child after you,” said Cousland.

The last thing Hawke saw was the white clouds scudding over the mountains.


End file.
